Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Spooky Books That Aren’t Stephen King

Happy Tuesday Thursday! So, yeah I forgot to post this. I hope you had a great week and hope you have an even better weekend..  

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a Halloween Freebie, so I’ve landed on 10 Spooky Books that are not by Stephen King. It seems that whenever there is a list of horror or anything remotely spooky he appears on some lists multiple times. And, not to throw shade at him, but there are other authors that do a good job at writing horror. And some of them do it better than he. I’ve read 5 of the books on this list and the other 5, I’m actually afraid to read. Let me know in the comments if you’ve read any of these.

10 Spooky Books That Aren’t Stephen King

Read

1. Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark
   I just finished this book. It’s only 180 pages, but it packs a punch. It takes place in Georgia during the 1920’s and it’s about the horrors of racism. There are two antagonists. One we see on the page and the other that is mentioned in name only. Maryse and her band of revolutionaries are on a quest to put an end to Ku Kluxes, demonic forces of the Ku Klux Klan.
2. My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due
   I read this last year and participated in a live show discussion. Published in 1997 it is the first book in the African Immortals Series. For me My Soul to Keep is a little tricky to sum up, but the gist of the story is that Jessica unwittingly marries an immortal and because he is so deeply in love with her he hatches a plan to make her and their daughter immortal too. 
3. The Gilda Stories by Jewell Gomez
   There are a lot  vampire novels out there, but how many have you read that have a Black female vampire as the protagonist? The Gilda Stories was published in 1991 and the story is told in vignettes. It begins with a girl, who later becomes Gilda, killing a slave catcher in 1850 and ends in the year 2050 with vampires being hunted and killed. It deals with themes of blackness, sexuality, and female empowerment in various contexts.  
4. Anoka by Shane Hawk
   This is and Indigenous horror short story collection. Hawk is of Cheyenne and Arapaho descent. This collection explores themes of family, grief, loneliness, and identity through the lens of indigenous life. This was the first book I completed this year and really enjoyed it. Some stories are creepier than others, but I feel like they all make you take pause and think. 
5. The Good Son by You Jeong-Jeong
   Alright, full disclosure on this one. I haven’t finished reading this. I started it and got about 1/3 of the way through before I started reading something else. Our main character Yu-Jin wakes to find his mother dead lying in a pool of blood and he has no memory of the night before. It  explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son

Want to Read

1. Empire of the Wild by Cherie Dimaline
2. Lakewood by Megan Giddings – A startling debut about class and race, Lakewood evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation–part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
3. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is a psychological horror and social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. It follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families and an entity bent on revenge.
4. In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami is psychological thriller that takes the reader on a hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the nefarious neon-lit world of Tokyo’s sex industry. Frank an overweight American tourist employs Kenji to show him around the Tokyo underbelly. As he does Kenji becomes suspicious of Frank and believes he may be a serial killer.
5. Goth by Otsuichi – Morino and her schoolmate are obsesssed with murders and will go to any length to investigate them. Even if it means putting themselves in harms way. Strangely, the pair have no intentions of stopping the murderer they want to understand him.

Have you read any of these? If so, what did you think?

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